I found him in a small office with adjoining workrooms near the Raleigh-Durham Airport. He loved to talk flying, and I loved to listen. He once had dinner with Orville Wright. He’d invented a kind of glider for the Army during World War II; it was launched from larger aircraft high in the air so that it could glide along and finally land behind enemy lines. (A glider—behind enemy lines?!) He had designed a device to reduce vibration in nuclear power plants. He showed me pictures and diagrams of his inventions and projects. Finally he showed me his floatplane notebooks.
“Take a look through them if you like,” he said.
I thumbed through the notebooks and found his entry for his first successful flight in his third-generation homebuilt. It went something like this: “The aircraft lifted off and flew about one hundred yards. I taxied back and, just before reaching the dock, ran out of fuel.” I flipped through a few pages and found hand-drawn charts and diagrams and short statements like “This didn’t work, so I tried this.”
It was as if he’d used my character’s notebooks as a guide. They were both—all three of us, actually—delighted to put words on paper about this business of getting into the air in a flying machine.
The Annabelle Notebooks
AT SOME POINT DURING the reign of Dusty’s Air Taxi, I began keeping a notebook of my own, about flying my own airplane, Annabelle. It was written in the spirit of Tom Purcell’s and Albert Copeland’s notebooks—dry, terse, third-person accounts.
17 Nov 89. First flight of the air taxi service after its establishment on 7 Nov 1989. Purpose of flight was to transport the pilot to Hot Springs, Va., for a reading of his fiction at a conference of the Virginia Library Association. Passenger along for the ride was Michael McFee. Takeoff was scheduled for 8:30 a.m. or 0830 hours. The aircraft would not start with the battery-operated starter. A hand start was attempted and was successful at 0940. Takeoff was at 0946 hours. Passenger experienced minor discomforts due to cold air and rough air. Visibility was good. Destination airfield (Ingalls Field, Hot Springs, Va.) was along the northeastern end of a mountaintop, and at the end of the runway was a cliff. An exciting place to land. At 1500, hand-start attempts for flight back to N.C. proved unsuccessful because of cold weather. Pilot and passenger rented automobile. 21 Nov. was planned return.
20 Nov. West Virginia aircraft mechanic reported on phone that aircraft was battery-started without incident, with master switch in down/on position rather than up/on position. Return trip by auto to retrieve aircraft postponed until 25 Nov 89 because of inclement weather. Snow.
22 Nov 89. Services of aerial photographer obtained for future uses when called upon. David Mc-Girt of Buies Creek, N.C.
27 Nov 89. Pilot and passenger Tim McLaurin drove rental car 5½ hours to Ingalls Field, Va., to recover aircraft. En route Mr. Edgerton and Mr. McLaurin were lost twice and received one speeding ticket. Arrived at 1200 hours. First attempt to start Annabelle, after snow and ice removal, was unsuccessful, though it was determined that battery and starter were connected via master switch in down/on position. Aircraft was pushed into a large hangar by Edgerton, McLaurin, and two locals. Engine cowling was opened. Electrical power was available in hangar. Various extension cords enabled the positioning of a hair dryer blowing on left magneto and one on right. Space heater was placed on an oilcan sitting below engine so as to be near engine. A plastic extension hose directed air from heater into bottom cowling opening. A 2-amp battery recharger was connected to battery. Openings in cowling that would allow cold air entry/heat escape were stuffed with NFL Dolphins jacket, bath towels, a sleeping bag, and a sweater. Long-handle underwear were stuffed around air intake; two sleeping bags covered cowling on outside. Object was to heat engine. All apparati were brought from N.C. or purchased en route (hose and duct tape). After one hour of heating, 1245–1345, all apparati were removed/disconnected, switches turned on. Aircraft started instantly when starter button was touched. At 1210 pilot took off without incident, flew to Decker Field with touch-and-go landing at Person County Airport just south of Roxboro, N.C. Touchdown at Decker Field: 1600. Income from first Dusty’s Air Taxi venture: $60, Virginia Library Association. Expenses: Aircraft fuel and oil, $60; mechanic, $125; auto fuel, $25; Virginia Highway Patrol, $68; food, $25; duct tape and hose, $5.31; Hertz, $367.
For some reason (embarrassment?) I wrote no comments in my notebook about the return flight above. Tim was in the backseat. After takeoff I was navigating out of the mountains. Something was wrong. I was lost—in the rugged mountains. I did not realize that my compass was malfunctioning. Interference from a new radio was throwing the compass off by about thirty-five degrees. I kept finding myself unable to match my map (specific river bends, railroad crossings, and so forth) with what was below me on the ground. I didn’t consider that the compass was wrong. I was mumbling about the problem when Tim, behind me, asked, “What’s wrong?”
I told him.
He said, “I’ve got a compass.”
I turned and looked over my shoulder. He was pulling a necklace from inside his shirt, and dangling from it was a small compass.
“What direction do you need to fly?” he asked.
“Almost south,” I said. “About one hundred fifty degrees.”
I waited.
“Well, you need to go that way.”
I looked back.
He was pointing.
Soon we saw a water tower below. I buzzed it. SOUTH BOSTON (a town in southern Virginia) was written on the side. I knew where we were, and found our way home.
2 Dec 89. Chief pilot and seven-year-old daughter, Catherine, drove to Decker Field with chest of drawers in pickup truck to be installed in hangar. Items in chest of drawers included cleansers, cleaning rags and towels, tools, life preservers—orange—for extended over-water flight, lightbulbs for engine heating, extension cords, small rechargeable vacuum cleaner, windshield cover from previous owner, and other useful items. Pilot and daughter started aircraft and took off at approximately 1600 hours for 30-minute training flight in local area. The following were executed: several lazy 8s, several steep-banked turns, a power-on stall, a power-off stall, a spiraling turn. The passenger expressed enjoyment of all maneuvers. The landing was, of necessity, with a tailwind. The pilot placed 200-watt bulb in engine, with cowling openings stopped up with rags, towels, sponges—for experiment on following morning.
3 Dec 89. Following experiment was successful: starting engine. After a cold night. With lightbulb for overnight heat.
6 Dec 89. Gary Hawkings, filmmaker, questioned the chief pilot at Decker Field. Pilot sat on a stool in front of Annabelle. Questions regarded Tim McLaurin, Dusty’s program development chair and part-time navigator. Gary was making a film called The Rough South of Tim McLaurin. After the interview, the pilot took the filmmaker for a short, filmed ride around the field.
7 Dec 89. Mission to Fayetteville put on hold due to inclement weather: snow.
9 Dec 89. Mission to Fayetteville postponed again. Weather.
14 Dec 89. Plans made for Dusty’s first annual meeting and planning session, for Sunday, Dec. 17, at 1730. Place to be determined.
17 Dec. 1830 hours. First annual meeting and planning session. Another Thyme Restaurant in Durham, N.C. First two choices, In the Raw on the Eno and Weeping Radish, were closed. Attending: C. Edgerton, pilot; D. McGirt, aerial photographer. Displayed: Dusty’s Air Taxi’s first aerial photographs, which were of North Carolina’s Outer Banks. Discussed: photography and air-to-air combat. Meeting adjourned 1930 hours.
11 Jan 1990. Chief pilot took daughter for aircraft ride to Chapel Hill, purchased Dr Pepper and small bag of potato chips for her. One landing in Chapel Hill. On return flight, pilot accomplished lazy 8s, steep-banked turns, power-off stalls, and slow flight. On postflight, pilot failed to tie down aircraft. Returned to field and did so. High winds forecast for 12 Jan. One bulb and battery charger left in place, no cowling stuffing.
22 Aug 90. A mouse chewed up into little pieces a c
andy bar wrapper left in the aircraft.
Office to Remain Open
MY FRIEND WITH THE compass around his neck, Tim McLaurin, glimpsed a copperhead crossing the road one day and realized he didn’t have his ever-ready pillowcase (snake carrier) with him in his pickup truck. So when he caught the snake, he held it in his right hand by the neck so that it couldn’t bite him, and drove toward home with his left. As he turned into his driveway, the snake wriggled loose enough to bite Tim on the middle joint of his right index finger.
We talked on the phone. He was in the hospital, but he downplayed the whole incident.
When I visited him, Tim, still in bed, held up his hand and arm for me to inspect. The arm was twice its normal size, his tattoo spread wide, and at first I thought the finger was wrapped in black leather. It wasn’t—that was skin.
He survived, of course, but he wasn’t as lucky as he’d been when he was simultaneously bitten by two rattlesnakes a few years back. He’d been feeding them. They “knew” him, he claimed, and thus the bites had been dry, without venom.
Tim died of cancer in 2002, and I lost a true and valued friend. He and I flew together in Annabelle several times after that day back in 1989 when he pulled the compass up from around his neck. One day not long after that trip, he said, “How about you fly me down to Wilmington to buy four rattlesnakes?”
An image came into my head: the two of us in Anna-belle’s tiny cockpit, he in the rear, and I up front—and somewhere in there with us, a wooden cage or cooler holding four rattlesnakes. The next image came to me: the six of us in an upside-down crashed airplane that was about to catch on fire—Tim and I hanging upside down by our seat belts with the snakes loose below our heads on the ceiling.
I did not want to say no to Tim’s request. But I didn’t want to say yes either. So I changed the subject. I’d like to think that if pressured, I would have said yes.
The image of two guys hanging upside down by their seat belts in an airplane about to catch fire with snakes waiting for them on the ceiling seemed ripe for fiction. So I wrote a short story about that and then later rewrote it as a scene for the novel In Memory of Junior.
JIM HENDERSON, ANOTHER FRIEND, and I were about to go for a ride. It was Monday, January 21, 1991, Martin Luther King Jr. Day. Jim wanted to take aerial photographs of the Friends School that his son and my daughter attended, and I was happy to offer the aerial platform. As usual, I called the weather station at Raleigh-Durham Airport. The reported wind was fifteen knots out of the north. My rule was not to fly if the ground wind was fifteen knots or more. As explained, landing a tail dragger in high wind is tricky and dangerous.
Good sense, safe sense, dictated that I not fly that day. The wind was too strong. But I was confident and ready to fly. I’d yet to have a cheap lesson about “confidence.” Even though Raleigh-Durham was the official weather station for the area, perhaps I could cheat. I called another airport, Person County Airport, five miles north of Decker Field, and asked about the winds there. Twelve knots out of the north. Good, I would fly.
I finished my preflight check, we climbed in, I cranked, and we taxied out of the hangar to the end of the runway, which was around that short dogleg.
On takeoff roll, the aircraft felt slow and heavy. Because of the high tailwind, the roll was very long. We lifted off. Annabelle was not climbing well. Far across a field ahead loomed a line of tall trees. I’d become uneasy during the long roll, and now I visualized not clearing the trees. I immediately aborted the takeoff, dropping Anna-belle back down onto the runway. But we were almost out of runway and moving along at a good clip. No problem, I thought, because beyond the runway was an open field. I’d walked over it soon after renting my hangar. What I didn’t know was that since then, a ditch had been dug perpendicular to our ground path. We rolled into the field and Annabelle’s main landing gear dropped into the ditch. The rear of the airplane lifted into the air and continued over the nose, as if in slow motion. Ka-wham. We landed upside down.
We hung upside down from our seat belts.
I had bumped my head somehow. I was stunned. I asked Jim if he was okay. He said he’d cut his head, but not badly. I turned and looked. He was staring at his hand. A bit of blood was on his fingertips. We unbuckled our seat belts, fell into the top of the cockpit, then scrambled out.
I stood and looked at my love, Annabelle. Totaled.
THAT NIGHT I CALLED several friends to tell them about the crash—Jim Butts, Johnny Hobbs, David McGirt. Was I okay? they asked. How was the airplane? What happened? Still shaken, I told each of them the story.
I called Tim. “Tim, I crashed my airplane today.”
“Damn,” he said. “I wish I’d been with you.”
HERE’S THE FINAL Dusty’s Air Taxi notebook entry:
21 Jan 91. Aircraft disabled on aborted takeoff, later declared a total loss, as a consequence of estimate of repair costs. Insufficient power was available to complete takeoff climb under conditions at the time. Decision was made at about 10–20 feet in the air to abort takeoff and climb-out. Aircraft was landed. Aircraft rolled beyond end of runway (Decker Field) into a field. When main landing gear entered a shallow ditch, the gear remained stationary and the aircraft continued onto nose and then onto top, leaving pilot and passenger, photographer Jim Henderson, with bumps on heads and suspended in seat belts upside down.
Egress was accomplished, hastily.
FAA inspection determined the mishap to be an incident rather than an accident.
Flight operations temporarily suspended. Office to remain open.
PART 7
(2003–05)
LOOKING BACK
Hippie Dance
WHEN I STARTED PILOT training in 1966, the national antiwar movement was little more that a national whisper. By the time I got my wings in 1967, a more public antiwar movement was getting under way. That year had been a crowded, heady year for me. There’d been little time for anything outside studying flying, thinking flying, breathing flying. I’d been unable to keep up with news about the antiwar movement, but by 1968–69 that movement and the 1960s revolution were beginning to interest me and some of my buddies stationed in Japan, flying F-4s. Every Wednesday night at the officer’s club we danced to the music of Janis Joplin and her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, as performed by another band from the States. In our quarters, my roommate, Jim, would lie on the floor between his big stereo speakers, listening to the Doors’ “Light My Fire.” On our refrigerator was that peace symbol, and on our walls, the antiwar poster. So by 1969 there was a kind of unspoken peace between antiwar demonstrators and certain pilots, of whom I was one.
Then a year later in Clovis, New Mexico, there were enough of us in this contingent to decide on, plan, and execute a hippie dance. One night we cleared two rooms in the BOQ, set up a stereo system, gathered tapes and records, and had us a dance. Guys brought wives or girlfriends. We were all hippies, and we were not being disrespectful (of hippies), or at least some of us weren’t, I know. I filmed it with my Super-8 camera. The movie shows pilots dressed as hippies, dancing. Hippie spirit was contagious. And fun.
The next morning, as I climbed into my old T-33, smelled aircraft fuel and old metal, pulled on my helmet, attached my G suit, started engines, pulled my oxygen mask to my face, and checked in on the radio, “Silver Two,” hippie spirit vanished.
Courage
THE VIETNAM WAR FOLLOWS me around like a small, dark, deadly cloud, just over my shoulder. My part in the war floats somewhere in that cloud, accompanied by remnants of fear, pride, shame, exhilaration, and sadness. Without my dream of being a pilot, I might have missed the war.
When I look back, I am surprised at my nonchalance about being ready to drop a nuclear weapon on Russian soil if commanded to do so. Did I ever contemplate the fact that hundreds of young men like me were, without one question, preparing to follow probably self-annihilating commands from their superiors, and might be responsible for bringing about a horrib
le end to world civilization—civilization, that state in which human beings marry, have children, live safely in homes where they perhaps achieve some kind of meaning and happiness, make plans to go fishing, build tree houses, play ball, and go outside to enjoy the green mist of buds in spring trees while eating a sandwich?
No. I did not contemplate any such thing.
How can a young man, raised in the Baptist Church, learning the teachings of Jesus, soaking in the pleasures and joys of being alive on Earth, the joys of eating, loving, sharing, laughing—how can he race toward an aircraft carrying a nuclear bomb to be dropped on other human beings, many of whom he would clearly like, even love, if given the chance? Is such willingness to kill in our genes, irrevocable? What gets us whipped into such a frenzy, and how much can we ever do about it?
THE WRITING OF THIS book has been the third chapter in my flying life. The first was military flying; the second was Annabelle; and now I am trying to separate the wheat from the chaff, to understand why I chose to go to war, to examine the pride, the shame, and the exhilaration and to see how they have worked for, against, and around one another.
In 1994, before writing this book allowed me to better understand my part in war and my journey to war, I visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The memorial is not a statue of a great steed, a great soldier, a great eagle, a great sword; there is no giant symbol to give rise to passion and nationalism. The wall speaks differently. It is only what it is: a wall—with the names of those once alive among us who died in the war in Vietnam. It is a record, a narrative of names.
I stood before it the first time, almost numb. When I found the name I was looking for—that of the young man I’d trained, who became my friend, and who never returned from his mission that day back in 1971—a sudden release and collapse of something deep inside me brought a rush of tears and a long moan. I felt possessed by an inside self suddenly grown big, a kind of gangly self, breaking out into the open, taking over, unable to hold back anguish any longer.
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